Fracking and the oil industry's collaborators

Harry Alford's March 7 commentary, "Anti-fracking legislation is premature," had me scratching my head. It completely ignored the serious and documented environmental and climate issues caused by hydraulic fracturing, the very issues the bill would address.

Instead, Mr. Alford, president of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, touts the economic benefits of fracking for Maryland and for the U.S. as a whole. He even hints that this bill, designed to protect Maryland from unsafe fracking, could lead to "interfering with the shale gas boom elsewhere."

That's just absurd. Is it a coincidence that The National Black Chamber of Commerce has received $675,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998? This looks to me like just another piece of ExxonMobil's billion-dollar climate change denial machine.